Corporate Responsibility: how it should not be devalued

Jan 18, 2015

Shafiq R. Bhuiyan
Manager, Corporate Responsibility at Robi Axiata Limited___________________________________
So, you are a Customer Service Representative (CSR)? it happened back in the year 2008
and I still remember the day when one of my seniors at the University asked me this question
upon our introduction; I was working with the CSR Centre then and he used to work for one
of the leading telecoms of the country. I was not embarrassed at all as I knew that CSR was
then an incipient concept for many and even I myself was clueless about its vast use before I
joined that Centre. CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) or commonly known as Corporate
Responsibility (CR) or Social Responsibility (SR) is no more a catchphrase now; rather its
good that companies are now quite staid about highlighting their CR performances in
Bangladesh.
Competing with the MNCs many local firms and conglomerates are also wide awakened
about their corporate responsibility but at the same time one has to be very observant about
the possible paradox of the wider aspect of Responsibility bespoken with CR.
Corporate Responsibility is yet to have a solitary definition. Google it and you will go
through thousands of definitions, concepts, guidelines about CR and that brings the
fundamental impediment to get a good grasp on the subject matter. Many of my good old
friends still mock that while sales and marketing team works hard to generate revenues and
finance team often scuffles to manage the flow of fund, CR/CSR team spends companys
earning at liberty, spoiling resources without bringing any significant tangible benefit to the
company! Unfortunately though, this is a very general perception about CR in most cases.
The basic of Corporate Responsibility is very simple doing good for the entire society by
doing your business well. In a broader aspect, CR can be explained as the sense of
responsibility perceived by an organization (as an individual entity), and that the adaptation
largely depends on how the organization foresees its responsibilities towards its stakeholders
(the society at large) who have controls and impacts on the core business of the organization.
Reputed corporates, renowned to be good at CSR, apprehend their responsibilities for
continuous business progression. As long as a company remains operative its responsibilities
emerge bigger and greater and as the company performs on its responsibilities and acts on
them its business is expected to turn up with better performance every day.
Till date many organizations dispute identifying where to start off to plan and strategize their
Corporate Responsibility while one hardly realizes that when an enterprise is legally born it
has already been in progress to fulfilling its responsibilities.
The basic requirements of starting a business, besides due registration and obtaining the
license of operation (belongs to the compliance part) are - Capital, People, Process, and
Products/Services. To keep the new business competitive in the market (and as an inborn
sense of responsibility - CR), enterprises need to make sure that the capital funds are not

illegal (no black money) and that their sources are disclosable; capital machineries are of
good qualities and that they are sourced from a reputed (not famous) vendor that provides
extensive after sales services; the operational process is designed in a cost effective way and
that it is efficient; and the products/services the company offers in the market are compatible
with public demand, unique featured, price sensitive, and above all are submissive to its
customers perceived values. All these features comprise responsible entrepreneurship, the
very first step towards being a good corporate citizen, hence indicating smooth progression
towards sustainability.
A business must have a vision, a mission and some objectives even before it was planned to
inaugurate. These are not just mere statements but are the reflections on how the business is
supposed to survive in the long run with good reputation signifying business sustainability
fulfilling the corporate responsibility part. A vision is how the company sees the impact of its
business over a longer period of time (can be under a 5 to 20 years frame); mission is a
statement that expresses the reason of its very existence, and the mileage of success it aims to
achieve through its vision; objectives, principles or purposes are the supporting mechanism of
running the business aligning with its vision and mission statement. It is the businesss
responsibility (CR) to work for achieving its vision by accomplishing its mission, designing
its objectives and policies to cope up with the business dynamics and progress towards
sustainability (the impact of CR). Realizing the corporate responsibility aspect will smooth
the journey of a business towards its long term aimed growth.
Unlike what our colleagues mock about, Corporate Responsibility is not a dormant junction
of the business, neither a sole obligation of the CR department or CR managers, nor a
business annex to spend companys money for public benefits and ending up getting tax
benefits. In 1991 Carroll first presented his CR model as a 4 part pyramid dividing the
responsibility aspect into philanthropic responsibility, ethical responsibility, and legal
responsibility with economic responsibility at the bottom of the pyramid. CR should ideally
be the harvest of a cross-functional effort across all departments and all functional wings of
an organization where teams, for example, who oversee the legal, company secretariat,
corporate affairs, and corporate governance functions can join the CR team to act and
contribute in fulfilling the legal part of CR; marketing, finance, operations teams can join
hands with the CR team to contribute in satisfying the philanthropic portion; human
resources, compliance, ethics office, supply chain, procurement they all can support to
justify the ethical aspect; and all the efforts help accomplish the organizations economic
responsibility, capitalizing on which the company redeems its resources for future and
sustainable investment.
One very important feature of CR is to make sure the constancy in external communications
and disclosures by a business to ensure its transparency. In todays world Annual Reports
with traditional financial statement and audit reports are not adequate to build trust among
stakeholders on a companys overall performance; neither can they address and convince all
its stakeholders that the company is doing well in all aspects. A responsible organization
communicates through different approach and media including but not limited to
sustainability reports, interactive webpages and e-reports, e-/newsletters, pamphlets, press
conferences, stakeholder engagement projects, community development projects, building
partnerships, etc. All these external communications can also be a great platform, from
marketing perspective, to enrich the brand image of the business.

To come to a conclusion to what I have been trying to describe here, CR is a combination of

business driven efforts focusing towards the betterment of its beneficiaries (i.e. consumers,
investors, government, public, regulators, etc.). It can have some philanthropic components
(i.e. donation, sponsorship, scholarship, etc.) but these have to be aligned with the future
capacity of the business, strategically embedded. CR or CSR is not just a few activities that
businesses often try to promote, it goes far beyond that. By quoting CSR Activities in the
communications a business devalues its responsibilities, devaluates the concept among its
stakeholders. CR is simple, but the application is quite vast. No one can justify whether a
companys CR is good or bad, for the results and impact of the CR initiatives will reveal
itself whether they were effective or not. One can only appreciate if the company is doing its
business responsibly or not; but for a responsible company, its the company itself who can
identify whether their approach was good (effective) or not good (not impactful).